After yesterday’s successful and sunny climbs of Pico de Orhy and Arthanolatze, I was looking forward to another easy day in the mountains on 31st August 2022 but it was somewhat more difficult.

Urkulu EA2/NV-022

Overnight, there had been a substantial thunderstorm with rain in the Pyrenees and the drive into the valley from St. Jean Pied de Port was rather wet. My first problem was that I only had an underpowered Fiat Panda for my hire car, and on the slippery roads which had just seen their first substantial rain for months, there was no way I could get up the tiny steep roads from the D933 at Arnéguy that my sat nav wanted to take me on. After several false starts, I made it back to St. Jean Pied de Port and onto the much better D428. This back-tracking already made me substantially behind schedule, but as I climbed, the low cloud and rain turned, of course into fog. The reduced visibility in itself would have been bad enough but this was compounded by the fact that the D428 forms part of the Compostela pilgrimage route and my route was packed with pilgrims walking in the middle of the road, even on the hairpin mountain bends, with little to no visibility. By the time I reached the Refuge Orisson, on the way towards Urkulu, I decided that the drive had become too dangerous for me to be comfortable, and I pulled in for a while to see if the fog would lift. It didn’t. After 30 minutes pulled in, and still surrounded by pedestrians, I took advantage of a brief spell of extra visibility to continue uphill, hoping that I would eventually break out of the fog. Luckily, my hope was correct and a couple of kilometers further on, I found myself able to see again.

Eventually, I made it to the car park at the foot of Urkulu. Like Ori yesterday, the car park itself is on the border with Spain, but unlike Ori, there is no way to cross the border by car as the D428 continues on the French side.

It was in this car park that I had my next problem. A herd of horses took a strong interest in my hire car and started licking it and one even tried to sit on the bonnet. Luckily I was still in the car at this point and reverse gear was swiftly engaged before any damage was done, but I certainly left the car with some unease about the state I would find it in on my return!

As I started climbing Urkulu, the fog had caught up with me and started to envelop the road I had just driven up.

The walk up Urkulu itself is pretty much trivial. It isn’t very steep and it is directly uphill. This was very welcome given the likelihood that I might have had to descend with no visual aids!

Once at the top, you are rewarded with the Roman fort that Urkulu is famous for, believed to date back to the year 28 BC. Apparently there are views from here over the whole of the Aquitaine plain but I’ll need a future return visit to confirm that.

The summit is only a few tens of metres further on from the fort and has ample space for antennas, although it is quite rocky.

Urkulu is a 6-point summit for SOTA purposes, and I was able to make some 18 QSOs from here (all but one on 20m CW). I would have made more but, in the middle of the pile-up I started to hear thunder not too far away. Not wishing to be caught on a mountain in a thunderstorm with an antenna and with cloud hindering my ability to descend, I decided that a quick evacuation would be required.

Fortunately, I reached the car safe and sound and the horses seemed to have lost interest in the vehicle too, which was undamaged. Visibility was only about 20m though, so the decent down the mountain was very slow and was made additionally dangerous by a very stubborn horse that decided to stand right across the single-track road on a hairpin bend. Only after five minutes of revving the car engine did I eventually persuade it to move.

I had, by the way, hoped to climb Txangoamendi EA2/NV-170 at the same time as Urkulu since both routes start from the same car park but with the delays and inclement weather I didn’t have time.

As I said, the climb up Urkulu is fairly gentle: it’s only 200m ascent in 800m of walk. It probably took about 30 minutes to walk up (although I didn’t start my GPS until I was part of the way up the hill, as there were lots of other things on my mind!) and about 20 minutes to walk back down.

Mont Arrokagaray F/PO-251

Mont Arrokagaray is a small one-point hill in the Pyreneean foothills near Cambo-les-Bains, on the way back from Urkulu heading towards the coast at Biarritz. As a much smaller hill out of the mountains, it was unaffected by the fog I had on Urkulu, and the rain had stopped by now also.

I parked at the start of the track at 43.316°, -1.379°, which is not where I’d actually planned to park. This initially took me down what turned out to be a private driveway before I corrected that, so if you repeat this route you want to head north-east from the road as you will be going back behind the hill.

The only really notable thing to say about the climb is that a sign (in French and Basque) at the start of the path requested walkers not to climb the hill 8th May – 31st July or 1st September – 30th November. This was due to a scientific study to capture and tag the local vulture population. Luckily, today was 31st August so it was the last opportunity to climb the hill before the winter!

The path itself is a gentle grass track with pretty views over the local Basque countryside. The summit has a rounded top and the activation area is very large. Conscious of the local flora and fauna, I was careful to try to avoid setting up my aerial off the path, so I went a bit beyond the summit itself to set up in a slightly more open clearing. Luckily, there was absolutely no-one else around, so I wasn’t in anyone’s way.

This was a lovely spot to operate from and I was able to make 19 QSOs without having to descend in any hurry. Again, all but one of these was on 20m CW. I must take this opportunity to thank Christian F4WBN who made a QSO with me on 2m FM from every one of the four summits I activated, and who was clearly watching me on APRS as he was already ready to call me as soon as I reached the top! Christian is a well-known SOTA chaser who lives nearby in Bayonne.

The climb (once I went the right way) took me about 20 minutes and the descent took about 15 minutes.

At the end of August, I was able to return to the Pyrenees to do a few new (to me) SOTA summits over a couple of days. On 30th August 2022, this trip started with a couple of mountains, the Pico de Ori and Arthanolatze.

Pico de Ori EA2/NV-003

The ten point Pico de Ori (the Spanish name) is easily reached by the Puerto de Larrun, where there is ample parking space, and is located right on the border between France and Spain. From a SOTA perspective it counts as being in Spain, hence the EA2/NV-003 reference number representing Navarra. In French, the same mountain is called the Pic d’Orhy, and when I was researching the climb, most of the websites I found used that name, so it’s worth being aware of both.

The ascent starts as a fairly easy walk on a path that runs behind the first two summits in the image above. This was a fairly easy walk and not excessively steep.

There is, however, one very short section that was slightly more of a challenge for me, where the path crosses a piece of fairly smooth rock. Some thunderstorms the previous day had made this rather slippery. A steel rope has been anchored into the rock to provide a bit of a handhold, but it is fairly slack. Fortunately, some fellow walkers were able to help tension it for me, so I could hoist myself up.

Once past that section, the path again flattens out and comes to a col at the back of the Pico de Ori. From there, it is a fairly steep climb straight up the summit, but no scrambling required.

The summit is in the form of a cliff face. Although it is quite long, there is a steep drop on the French side and the Spanish side, where the path is, also drops away quickly, meaning that there isn’t much space for HF antennas. This is also a very popular summit as it’s the western-most mountain over 2000m in the Pyrenean chain and a fairly easy hike. Consequently, I just made 5 QSOs as quickly as possible (two on 2m FM, and three on 20m CW, with a low antenna to keep it out of the way as much as possible) and left the summit as fairly quickly.

The ascent, which is about 400m of climb over 2.8kms, took me about 75 minutes. The descent took about 65 minutes.

Arthanolatze F/PO-173

About fifty minutes’ drive north of Pico de Orhy is Arthanolatze, in the hamlet of Iraty in the Ossau valley. (Lovers of French cheese will probably recognise Ossau-Iraty from the sheep’s cheese that is produced here.)

This is a four-point summit and a very pleasant walk. One post I read recommended parking at 43.041°, -1.024° but there is now signage here saying that this is an emergency access route for ambulances. I therefore parked at the Col de Bagargi, where there is a café/restaurant and other facilities. However, this does mean that the walk is about 500m longer than the one starting from the recommended parking and, furthermore, it starts with a steep downhill on road, and therefore a steep uphill section on the return.

Once you make it down that road you reach the recommended parking point where a gravel track leaves the road and heads into some trees. Once through the trees, continue on the flat gravel track heading west.

This track brings you slightly downhill to a stream running in a valley. Continue along the track and you then have a choice. If you are very observant, on the right, there is a small path heading away from the track at 43.0435°, -1.0324°. You can take this path to head directly up the hill (which is the route I took on the descent). I, however, missed this turn on the ascent and so the other option is to follow the main gravel track which zig-zags up the hill.

Either way, you come out to a small refuge just below the summit. At this point turn off the main path and follow the path on your left marked with yellow posts. Again, many of these are barely visible and some are more trip-hazards than obvious markers!

Again, I got this wrong on the ascent and incorrectly continued on the main path past the hut, meaning that I then had to scramble up the side of the hill on tracks made by animals rather than the much easier ‘official’ route.

Once on top of Arthanolatze, there is a lot more space for antennas, and it’s much less busy or well known than Ori, meaning I had the place pretty much to myself.

I was able to make 12 QSOs from here (11 on 20m CW and one on 2m FM) before I had to back up for the drive back to my hotel.

The ‘ascent’ took me 80 minutes over the sub-optimal route, including about 100m of descent and 200m of ascent over about 4.3km. The ‘descent’ was only about 3.6km and took me about an hour.